Research Interests

• Social inequalities in global cities;

• Migration, diversity,  & community life 

• Urban sociology - especially community life, social inequality, poverty, and work in global cities

• Attachments to and formations of place

• Cultural diversity and the urban commons

• Everyday multiculturalism and 'lived diversity'

• Migration and migrant workers in Australia and Southeast Asia. 

• Human rights, peace and co-existence

• Urban ethnography 

• Sport and social resilience

• Urban life in Singapore

• Public, caring and just urbanisms

• Placemaking and public space

• Social and caring infrastructure

• 'Asia literacy' among Australians and Australian institutions. 

I am a member of the Macquarie University Housing and Urban Research Centre. I have held a number of large Australian Research Council Grants and has extensive experience in advising and undertaking commissioned research for government on issues of community, diversity, and strategies to tackle racism. I have supervised numerous PhD projects on topics surrounding everyday multiculturalism, international students and migrant workers global cities, and social inequality, urban communities and care.

Current projects

Social Resilience, Migrant Integration and Informal Sport in Public Space.
Australian Research Council Discovery Project 2022-2024
CIs:  Amanda Wise, Selvaraj Velayutham & Kristine Aquino

This project investigates the potential of informal sport in fostering social resilience and cohesion in new migrant communities by analysing how social outcomes are shaped by public spaces and built environments of Australia and Singapore. Expected outcomes and benefits include qualitative evidence of the dynamics that contribute to the formation of successful neighbourhoods and communities, related policy and urban planning recommendations and an enhanced capacity to build urban citizenship among Australia's growing and vulnerable multicultural migrant populations.

Delivering Inequality? Wellbeing & Survival in Australia’s Gig Economy  
Australian Research Council Discovery Project- 2023-2025
CIs:  Selvaraj Velayutham, Amanda Wise, Shaun Wilson, Norbert Ebert, Nicholas Harrigan

The food and parcel delivery industry is now a structural feature of the Australian labour market. Little is known about the social consequences of this development for the workforce. especially temporary and long-term migrant workers involved in this industry. This project aims to investigate the risks to safety and wellbeing to migrant cohorts who undertake this work, interrogating the intersecting impact of age, gender, class, and ethnicity and particularly migration status. The project produces major national benefits, such as an enhanced capacity to inform future labour market policies and regulation as well as conceptual innovation in describing the 'everyday survival' strategies of migrant workers in Australia.

Completed projects